• “Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining Services”

    Our own Dan Fay (eScience blog) has a great post about data mining services in the cloud. “So for fun – I downloaded a csv file of a stream gauge near Redmond into Excel and ran the “Highlight Exceptions” tool to find outliers in the dataset – it read the table, uploaded it to the…

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  • “I’m a PC” ad campaign

    After all the buzz about the Seinfeld ads, Microsoft announced the “I’m a PC” campaign. Clever me finds. Finally, something creative from Microsoft. I’ve said in the past how much I love the Apple ads (not just the “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” ones but everything that Apple does. It’s funny how people get…

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  • On advertising (that new Microsoft ad everyone is talking about)

    I must admit, I do love the “I am a Mac, I am PC”, as I’ve said a number of times on this blog. When Microsoft announced that they were investing $300M on a campaign, I hoped that something good would come out. Well, the first ad has now been released and everyone is talking…

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  • Travel blog: A week in Greece

    And what a week has been! Lots of food, meeting friends, traveling around, and even been productive with work (i.e. no meetings!!! 🙂 I am now back in Xanthi and at my family’s home in Petinos (3.5km outside of Xanthi). I’ll continue working from here with a focus on the Web book. I am planning…

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  • My online identity… change it or keep the current one?

    When the .name top-level domain name became available, I thought that I would make use of it for all my online identity needs for the rest of my life, so I purchased the savas.parastatidis.name domain. My personal email has been savas@parastatidis.name since then while my web/blog presence is located at http://savas.parastatidis.name. After a change in…

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  • Freebase Parallax

    This is a break from my “travel blogging” 🙂 I just watched the video of the “Freebase Parallax” browsing interface demo. Really really cool. It’s the power of semantics!!! Freebase Parallax.

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  • Photos: Zurich airport at sunset and after the rain, Greek food!

    So, I arrived in Greece and it’s already been fantastic. After a long trip that saw me waiting at Heathrow for 6 hours, at Zurich airport for 3, I finally arrived in Thessaloniki. My friend Kostas picked me up from the airport at 2am and drove me to Xanthi but not before we stopped to…

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  • "How Do I Model State? Let Me Count the Ways"

    Long time ago, in a galaxy far away… there was OGSI, there was WSRF, there was HTTP, there were services… and there were heated discussions 🙂 Ian Foster suggested that we write a paper together explaining our different approaches in building applications which deal with “state”. If my memory serves me well, that took place…

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  • Radiohead at the White River Amphitheater

    I found last-minute tickets for the Radiohead gig at the White River Amphitheater last night. It was absolutely amazing; loved it! The venue is great and it was absolutely packed. Here are some photos… A panorama of the venue before they started. I experimented with my new Canon 40D but, for the first time in…

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  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

    EBS is another great service from Amazon. The company continues to innovate. Werner had talked about this service in the past but now it’s available. Well done Amazon! The Amazon Web Services Blog has more. I found the pricing model interesting. While traffic from EC2 to S3 is free (unless you cross the Atlantic within…

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